This little article by Larry Beckish, former Gopher QB and assistant coach under Lou Holtz, is pretty good. It talks about the character of Coach Holtz but what was most intriguing is Beckish's recount of Holtz's first meeting with the team at Minnesota. See if this sounds familiar...
At the first Golden Gophers team meeting, he told a disheartened 1-10 team he expected to go to the Rose Bowl -- and if the team didn't go in January, they would go the following January. He looked the players in the eyes and said, "And you can take that to the bank!" The kids' smiles were bright enough to turn midnight to midday.
The rest of the article is talks about what a great man, great coach and mentor Holtz is; it is an interesting article. But clearly the paragraph above is the highlight. It ends with this gem o an anecdote.
Holtz also passed this humorous concept to the staff: "When you get an athlete, he's got to be motivated, and he's got to be committed. It's like the kamikaze pilot who flew 54 missions -- he was involved, but not committed."
- The Wolverine.com (Michigan Rivals site) ranks their Big Ten and places the Gophers 7th.
- For some more NCAA hoops pre-season nonsence, here is Dick Vitale's All-Rolls Royce team. Vitale wants to be sure and include every relatively decent basketball player in the country (and include some guys who don't play for Duke or UNC) so he has SEVEN All-Rolls Royce teams. As if 35 of the best players in the country weren't enough he also was compeled to include 17 honorable mentions. Vitale really did his homework and narrowed his list to just 52 of the best players in the country.
- Off topic, Sports Illustrated has their top 100 players in MLB. The Twins notched two in the top 14 overall with Mauer as the second best player in MLB and Morneau as 14th. Joe Nathan came in top 50 to round out the the only Twins' respresentatives in the top 100.